Obama Presidential Center controversy about parks, not race

Just recently, a white man who is very involved with Jackson Park scolded me in response to an email to Friends of the Parks' supporters. We were celebrating the fact that the Chicago Park District filed a plan to replace the track and field that would be displaced by the Obama Presidential Center. He was mad that we claimed any part in that victory. He wanted all the credit.

Later that same day, an African-American woman who lives on the South Side gave it to me for celebrating any victory at all. She said that the only victory is keeping the OPC out of Jackson Park altogether.

Friends of the Parks has gladly accepted invitations to participate at a handful of tables over the last year or so, to provide perspective and consider strategy as local residents analyze the various Jackson Park "revitalization" issues. We've gathered with folks convened by the likes of the Rev. Byron Brazier and his Apostolic Church of God Jackson Park Stakeholders Group, the nonprofit leaders and community activists of the Obama Library CBA Coalition, the Save the Midway coalition of local residents, and Ald. Leslie Hairston's Jackson Park Golf and Community Leadership Advisory Council. And we've conferred with the white-led Jackson Park Watch activists, a group that arose out of disagreements with the white-led Jackson Park Advisory Council, which predates the Obama Foundation's announcement that it would locate in Jackson Park.

And we are participating in, and coordinating with others around, the Section 106/National Environmental Protection Act review that is taking place right now for Jackson Park, as we do all the time on projects that impact parks all over Chicago.

And people don't agree with each other. People who are white don't all agree with each other, and people who are black don't all agree with each other.

Meanwhile, of course, right-wing anti-Obama ugliness in the social media and fake news sphere is definitely spiking as those elements celebrate any bumps that Obama faces along the way to actualizing the OPC. That mess is awful and has no place in this conversation.

The conversation should be about whether parks—lakefront or not, historic or not—should be seen as prime parcels for real estate development in a city that is ranked No. 13 on the list of amount of parkland per 1,000 residents in high-density cities, according to the Trust for Public Land's 2017 City Parks Facts. We are the third-largest city by population. We should be at least No. 3 on the list. We don't have enough parkland as it is.

And the conversation should be about who's going to pay for all the road closures. But that's a story for another day.

We've said it before, and we'll say it again. All of the benefits of recently proposed museums on parkland in Chicago are possible without building them in parks. Since the beginning, and as recently as this month, Friends of the Parks has repeatedly encouraged the Obama Foundation to utilize vacant land across the street from Washington Park. We, and many others who oppose real estate development in parks, would love to see community-benefiting economic development and Obama's legacy honored on Chicago's South Side, where he got his start. Just not in a park.

Let's not again stoop to the racialized tactics. When that's what is really happening, it's appropriate to call it out. But that's not what this is.

In this city in which false dichotomies are often promoted by leadership in an effort to gain support for a particular public policy outcome, and, as we're reeling from the impact of such leadership in Washington, D.C., wouldn't it be nice if our hometown former president would call for a different kind of discourse? We at Friends of the Parks choose to believe that's who Obama is.

At a recent invite-only meeting held by the Obama Foundation to discuss the parking garage, a supporter of the OPC identified himself in affiliation with the nonprofit group he represents and suggested that those who ask any questions at all about pretty much any element of the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park must be white and must not care about black people.

That comment broke the Obama Foundation's own stated rules around civic engagement.